DID YOU KNOW?

If you ever want to reset your preferences to the default settings, and you are using a Mac, just throw away the “Director 8.0 Preferences” file in the Preferences folder in your system folder. In the past, this has been the only way to retrieve a window that is lost from sight.

You can also set the font type, size, and style of text in the Message window. This is not a preference, but you can select the text in the Message window and change it. New text placed in the Message window picks up the font used where the cursor in the Message window is located.

You can modify the HTML templates used by the Publish command to suit your own needs. You will find these files in the Publish Templates folder in your Director folder. You can even find the loader movies there. Be careful when messing with these, however, they contain special tags and code that are required if the templates are to work correctly.

You can also find files in a folder called Props that describe the way the Property Inspector creates its property options. They are interesting to look at, but fool around with these at your own risk.

You can place any cast library in the Libs folder to create a library. It can include members of any type, including scripts, bitmaps, sounds, and so on.

Mac users can also set how much memory is available in Director. Select the Director application in the Finder and choose File, Get Info. Under the Memory category, you can set the Preferred Size much larger. I prefer at least 20MB. This helps when you are working with large images or importing many images at a time.